iPhone users smash phones to get free upgrades

AppleiPhone users are deliberately smashing their own phones to get an upgrade or a newer model, according to gadget insurance provider Supercover.

Supercover has found that claims for iPhones can increase by as much as 50 percent when the latest upgrade or model is announced.

“Basically we were going through our cycle of claims and we noticed that the number of claims increased when there were iPhone upgrades and new models released,” explained Supercover spokesperson Iain Macauley to TechEye. “We asked our customers making a claim to send in their damaged phones where possible and when we got the examples back often they were in pieces.

“When we were checking the marks on these phones that had arrived in bits we discovered identical marks and shapes on the pieces to your typical hammer or, in some cases, the heel of a man’s shoe.”

Macauley said that it is very unusual for a genuine claim to return a completely smashed phone, “Usually if a phone is damaged it’ll be due to internal water damage. If you drop a phone 99 times out of 100 you’ll get a crack or a scratch, it wouldn’t completely fall to bits.”

Supercover said that 40 percent of the claims it receives when an Apple upgrade or new model is announced are ‘suspicious’ for insurance fraud, and it ended up rejecting around a quarter of these.